'Coronavirus has killed 10 lakh in 10 months'

A cemetery worker digs a grave in a section of the Valle de Chalco Municipal Cemetery that opened early in the pandemic to accommodate the surge in deaths, on the outskirts of Mexico City, on Thursday. Pic/AP

The global death count from the novel coronavirus, which emerged less than a year ago in China and has swept across the world, passed one million on Sunday. By Sunday 10.30 pm, the disease had claimed 10,00,009 victims from 33,018,877 recorded infections, according to an AFP tally using official sources.

The US has the highest death count with more than 2,00,000 fatalities followed by Brazil, India, Mexico and Britain. The pandemic has ravaged the global economy, inflamed geopolitical tensions and upended lives, from Indian slums and Brazil's jungles to America's biggest city New York.

World sports, live entertainment and international travel ground to a halt as fans, audiences and tourists were forced to stay at home, kept inside by strict measures imposed to curb the virus spread. Drastic controls that put half of humanity under some form of lockdown by April at first slowed its pace, but since restrictions were eased cases have soared again.

Mexico will take 2 yrs to release definitive toll

Mexico's Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell on Sunday said definitive data on the country's death toll from COVID-19 won't be available for "a couple of years." Mexico's current death toll is at 76,430, the fourth-highest in the world.

"When will the final statistics on deaths from COVID-19 be ready? Certainly, a couple of years after the first year of the pandemic," López-Gatell said, adding that work would be left to the country's statistics institute. Mexico does very little testing, and many people die without a test. But the Mexican government has avoided adjusting its death toll upward to account for people who died at home or weren't tested. Some cities have begun conducting their own recalculations, finding "excess deaths" likely caused by coronavirus were at least double official figures.

Victoria records fewest new cases in three months

Australia's coronavirus hot spot Victoria state has recorded its lowest number of new infections in over three months as the nation's second-largest city, Melbourne, further eases lockdown curbs. Melbourne will allow most children to return to school from mid-October and send over 1,25,000 people back to work. Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said only five new cases were recorded in the latest 24-hour period, the lowest case number since June 12.

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